Review of the Drobo 5c the ideal working solution

As modern day photographers/creators etc. we always have the need for more space to store all our creations.
You can of course opt for external drives and just keep stacking them, but that’s a solution that will be a huge problem very quickly, not only money wise, but also how to keep track of everything and how to keep everything “healthy”, just storing a harddrive somewhere doesn’t mean it will also keep your data healthy.

So most studios work with external towers with several harddrives, and although this works great (have been using it myself for years) it’s also a kind of a hassle when you want to expand. With most solutions you use a so called port multiplier that connects for example 5 drives to one USB/E-sata cable to your PC/Mac from where it’s seen as several drive volumes, when expanding this is possible by adding drives (another volume) or by switching from a 4TB to a 6TB drive which means load of copy work, not ideal when time is limited.

You can also use a NAS of course, but these often have problems with certain software where you open a file and try to save it in the same location (Lightroom for example).
So after some digging we decided to try the new Drobo 5c which is one of the most simple Drobo devices and offers only an USB(c) connection to your Mac/Pc. It has all the other features I wanted like just swapping drives to expand the system and the automatic battery in case of power outtage and of course the 30-90 day data checking. So check out this video review I did on the Drobo.

 

In this episode I take a look at in my opinion the ideal USB(c) solution for a studio with an always growing need for data storage.
Do remember that this ALONE is not a safe solution (one system never is), we use the Drobo 5c as our main working storage, the backups are done on the synology NAS and we also have one backup outside the building.

Enjoy the video review (and tips)
If you like it, please share and leave comments below, and of course subscribe to our channel.

 

2 replies
  1. Sheo2859
    Sheo2859 says:

    Great insight to Drobo 5C, I need to get over the fear factor of using and setting it up. I’ll check out pricing with hard drives at B&H, thanks again for the information.

Comments are closed.